[Junker]

Delphi nahm Stellung zu der Entscheidung von Petroglyph GameSpy Server zu nehmen.

Delphi: Being the multiplayer lead designer on this game and having worked on the C&C line, Generals and BFME, I am fully aware of the connecting issues, exploitation, and lag players find with the GameSpy system or so they think. In most cases it is not GameSpy but simply bad integration.

I'm not going to promise that EAW will be 100% solid and will have no online issues. I say this because in all my years of working on RTS games (10+), they receive more online testing in first day of launch than they do through the course of development. Something is always bound to arise.

One of my biggest worries is connectivity (4-players or more). This was horrible for BFME and Generals, and I want to assure you we are doing our best to make sure we catch as many problems as possible before we ship. I can't tell you how often I am sending e-mails making sure our QA is testing larger games. Petroglyph will be playing EAW multiplayer up until the day it goes live to the public. If we have to issue a day 1 patch to fix balance and connectivity issues before the game goes live we will. If another patch needs to be issued 1 month later to fix more issues, than so be it.

Having been a community manager on C&C, I’m fully aware of how players can abuse the system. I’ve been very hard on GameSpy and Lucas about making sure our player profile wipes and disconnect tracking systems are all in place before this game goes live. Rest assured myself and a few other devs will be very active playing games with the fans, so we will be fully aware of exploits and balance issues as they happen. This is my promise to you…

My hope is that we can work together and nail these issues as a group when they arise.